by Brian Solis

ContactOffice is launching the public beta of its Web office suite this week at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this week.

ContactOffice allows you to manage your data (emails, contacts, meetings, documents, tasks, etc.) in your virtual office from any computer with a Web browser. Outside of Microsoft Office and Exchange, the service also competes with the likes of Communigate’s Pronto and Zimbra.

While a first beta version had already been made available to early testers in March 2007, the new public beta incorporates all collaboration and communication features present in the current HTML-based version of the product, including messaging, calendaring, contact management, document sharing, Skype integration, SMS, fax, bookmarking, notes, etc.

The new platform is built entirely on AJAX, a web development technique for creating rich interactive web applications with Javascript, and was developed with the Google Web Toolkit, an open source Java software development framework. The new technology increases the level of speed and usability for end users significantly.

The company’s board has recently decided to look for venture capital to facilitate its growth in terms of functionalities, resellers & affiliates, users, regions and languages. Up until now, the company has managed to fund its own growth, apart from a small initial capital investment by Groupe Josi in 2001.

You can sign up for the beta here.

For more information, visit the company blog.

office microsoft communigate zimbra pronto contactoffice office2.0 office+2.0 office 2.0